![]() ![]() “But there is absolutely no evidence of destruction, or of deliberate damage to the site. The site where the Christian altar once stood against the rear wall of the Siniyah Island building’s sanctuary. “Eventually the walls collapsed, and the windblown sands moved over them, leaving low mounds with building debris, and pottery, glass and coins, which were visible on the surface,” said Tim Power, associate professor of archaeology at the UAE University in Al-Ain and co-director of the Siniyah Island Archaeology Project. The site appears to have been abandoned during the 8th century - not as a result of a clash between the two faiths, but because of an internal conflict within Islam, archaeologists believe. Using pottery and carbon dating of organic remains found in the foundations of the complex, the monastery has been dated to between 534 and 656 AD, a period that spans the lifetime of Prophet Muhammad, who was born around the year 570 and died in 632. Now, 36 years after that young Saudi’s discovery, another major piece has been added to the puzzle with the excavation of a Christian monastery on Siniyah Island, just off the coast of Umm Al-Quwain in the UAE. The discovery was just one small piece in a historical jigsaw puzzle which has since been all but completed, assembling a picture of a time when two faiths, Islam and Christianity, coexisted along the shores of the Arabian Gulf. ![]() Dated by archaeologists to the 4th century AD, it predated the coming of Islam by about 300 years, and proved to be among the oldest known Christian churches in the world. This, it turned out, was not just any church. Several stone columns remained intact, as did a pair of decorative plaster friezes, featuring a pattern of flowers linked by vine motifs. ![]() To the south was the sacristy, where the sacred vessels and the priest’s robes were kept.Īll the walls were covered in gypsum plaster, in which there were clear impressions of four crosses, the distinctive symbol of Christianity, each about 30 cm tall. The room to the north was where the bread and wine for the Christian ritual of the Eucharist would have been assembled. The central room, at the eastern end of the structure, was determined to be the sanctuary, where the altar would have stood. What he had stumbled on, it would later transpire, was the remains of a Christian church, long buried beneath the drifting sands.Īrchaeologists who later excavated the site would find an open, walled courtyard, about 20 meters long, with doorways leading onto three rooms.Īlthough Christianity began to wane as Islam rose, Christians were not seen as outsiders at that time, for the simple reason “they were family.” (Department of Archaeology and Tourism Umm al-Quwain) Having freed his vehicle and returned to Jubail, he alerted the authorities about his discovery. The first was that neither he nor his new car were well suited to dune-bashing, as both man and machine soon found themselves stuck fast in the sand.īut then, in the words of a paper published in the journal “Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy” in 1994, “in the process of digging out, (he) discovered he was on top of a wall which disappeared down into the sand.”Īlthough the young man had no idea what he had found, he realized it must have been very old. Before very long, however, he made two startling discoveries. LONDON: One day, in late February 1986, a young man from Jubail in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province decided to put his new 4WD through its paces on the sand dunes west of the coastal city. ![]()
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